New Orleans Saints defensive coordinator Gregg Williams was more animated than usual when he addressed his defense this week - and that's saying something. But he was especially riled up by how many deep balls the defense allowed late in their too-close-for-comfort 22-17 victory over the Tennessee Titans last week.

"I would imagine that if you talked to any of our young lads this week, there might have been a couple of comments made about that," Williams said.

Though he didn't signal out any specific offenders, he said two of the big plays were caused by a combination of blown coverages.

"You know, why were we surprised when they ran the same play against the same defense a second time?" Williams said. "I'm telling ya, you know what happens to repeat mistake offenders in this league? They go do what you guys do (in the media). They go find some other job. So there's a lot of guys in our room that are getting their resumes ready to go if that happens again. Cuz you don't do those kind of things, you can't be a repeat mistake offender.

"The thing that's most frustrating from a coaching standpoint is the lack of recognition. Because nobody makes a mistake on purpose. They make a mistake because for whatever reason they didn't understand or didn't know. That's my job is to do a better job of making sure they understand. And we tease them all the time that they need to eliminate from their vocabulary, 'I did not hear. I did not know. I do not understand.' And if they ever use that around me, then they're competing for jobs with you guys."

As much as Williams has tried to drive home his point this week, it's probably a message the Saints didn't need to hear. The secondary, which is stocked with veteran players, is already plenty peeved about some of the big plays that have been getting behind them over the past four games - even though they won all four of them.

If they wanted to, the Saints could use the excuse that teams have been throwing against them because they're trying to catch up. That's the biggest reason why the Saints rank 30th in the NFL in passing yards allowed this year (268.0), and the New England Patriots rank 31st and the Green Bay Packers rank dead last.

But the Saints say they don't want to fall back on that excuse.

"As a member of the secondary I don't like it one bit," cornerback Jabari Greer said. "We want to be able to statistically be better. ... No matter the score, when they're out there we gotta stop 'em. And we understand this is something we've got to work on and get right.

"But as long as we are minimizing mistakes, improving on past performances and winning games, those statistics really don't matter at the end of the day."

Safety Roman Harper also readily admitted that the Saints haven't been playing up to the standard they've set in recent years.

"Nobody's trying to say we've been a great or an outstanding defense at all, especially by the standards we've set in the past. But we're trying to get things corrected," Harper said. "You know, we play stifling defense for 85 percent of the game, and it's always these lingering three, four, five plays a week that are blowing up our numbers and making us look like were a bad defense. And that's not the case. We're playing lights out. And for those 10 percent or 15 percent, which equals three or four plays in a football game, we're messing up tackles, blowing coverages, missing tackles, mis-fitting, and that's making us as a whole look bad, and we're trying to get it corrected."

Earlier this year, the Saints were struggling with their run defense, which has been very solid during their five-game win streak. Now all of a sudden, it's the pass defense that's inconsistent. Both Harper and Williams said it hasn't been one consistent problem, but there has been a different breakdown here or there in each situation.